I'm Ready to Talk About It

It has taken me almost 2 months to talk about the fact that our cat James is not with us anymore. That's not a euphemism, he's still alive - he's just not with us anymore.

When we went to the pound to find a little gray kitten (just like my childhood cat), we looked all around and only found one. Just one scroungy gray kitten with conjunctivitis. We asked if there were more in the back. There weren't. So we decided that he was the one. That's how our life with James began. We loved having another little being in our home, despite all of his little (big) quirks.

Fast forward 4 years later, when our lives were about to change in a big way. In September 2006 we added a Golden Retriever to our lives, finally fulfilling our desire to raise a dog (and to fill the baby void in our lives until we were done with school.) The *funny* part about that is that I was actually pregnant when we picked our puppy up from the airport. So, within a year we went from having a quiet life with just us and our cat to a full house! James had a hard time with the change. He missed our quiet life.

After Soren was born, two bad things started happening. Soren would sneeze whenever he was around James. I figured that since he had been around him since birth, then he would escape any allergies to cats, but I couldn't deny what I saw every time. Also, James started acting out in really unbecoming ways - obviously protesting his new position in the family. We felt awful that we had to look for a new home for him, but our little baby took priority.

When I had to say my final good-bye to James, I lost it. As much as I tried to harden my heart and tell myself it was just an animal, I couldn't kid myself. He was our first baby and we had so many memories with him. I felt like an evil woman and he probably felt confused.

Anyway, tonight I was cleaning my kitchen and noticed something that I had been purposely ignoring for months. James' food bowl, still on our kitchen floor with tiny cat food crumbs left from his last meal at home. I haven't been able to even deal with the fact that he's really gone, so his food bowl has remained untouched this whole time. Karl and I haven't really been able to talk about it, so hardly any of our friends know that James is gone. Tonight I realized that I was ready to talk about it. Thanks for listening, even if it was just about a cat.